The field of this disclosure relates generally to analyzing data associated with accessing an electronic report and, more particularly, to network-based systems and methods for collecting, storing and analyzing the access data associated with a plurality of electronic reports generated by queries submitted by a client user and executed on a host computing device.
Data is oftentimes generated and stored at a host computing device. Client computing devices, also sometimes called user computing devices, may be able to access the data stored on the host device. In at least some cases, the client devices can generate report queries that are submitted to the host device, placed in a query queue, and then executed by the host device on the data accessible by the host device to generate a report. The queries may include certain parameters that are to be included within or help define the report. The generated report may then include columns and rows of data that satisfy the parameters submitted within the query. In some cases, the parameters may include a schedule for generating the reports. For example, the reports may be scheduled to be generated daily, weekly or monthly. In some other cases, one of the parameters may include a specific language that the user wants the report generated in. For example, some users may want a report presented in English, and others may prefer the report presented in Spanish.
In at least some known cases, client users may request hundreds, if not thousands, of reports from a host device. These reports may be in multiple languages, and may include thousands of columns and rows of data. The generation of these reports can be very time consuming and costly. In addition, these reports may be generated at different access levels. In other words, client users may be assigned an access level for accessing data stored within the host computing device. For example, a lower level sales person within a company may be assigned an access level of 1 for accessing reports of general data stored at the host device; whereas a high level executive within the same company may be assigned an access level of 10 for accessing reports of confidential business data stored at the host device. Thus, different access levels can also be an input parameter for generating reports, and can cause even more reports to be generated.
Each report that is generated by these host devices requires additional computer coding and/or hardware at the host system in order to generate and output the reports. Accordingly, the more reports requested by the user and generated by the host device means the more costs incurred by the host and/or the client requesting the report. In addition, an increase in the number of reports generated also means an increase in the time needed to process such reports.
In at least some cases, reports that are generated for a user client go unused or may only be accessed by a few persons. In other cases, reports may be generated for multiple access levels and/or in multiple different languages, but only one access level of the report and/or a single language of the report is accessed by the client users. Thus, in these examples, numerous versions of these reports are being generated, but not used by the client user. There are no known systems that generate reports, but also that collect, store and analyze access data (i.e., data associated with accessing the report including time of access, date, person, report accessed, access level, etc.) associated with the generated reports.
Accordingly, it would be desirous to have a system that generates reports for client users, and also tracks the user access data associated with such reports and generates an output so that the host and the client know whether the reports are actually needed.